Progressives: Go off the reservation

When progressive activists gather next week at the annual America’s Future Now conference, frustration and dismay are certain to be widespread.

Action on jobs is stalled, on mixed signals from the White House. A Democratic Congress pours billions into the war in Afghanistan, even as legislation to forestall the lay offs of 300,000 teachers is derailed in the Senate. The growing calamity of the Gulf of Mexico oil spill only highlights the lack of action on climate change and new energy.

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Pollsters talk of an "enthusiasm gap." The tea party right is on the march. Independents are increasingly skeptical. Turnout is flagging among the "rising electorate" — the young, single women, minorities — the core Obama base that has been hard hit by the recession.

If Democrats suffer deep losses in the fall as now predicted, gridlock will grow worse. The challenge is how progressives will respond. For Democrats — and Republicans — fare badly when the party's activist base is disengaged.

The Obama administration was elected with a mandate for change — in the middle of a crisis that demanded it. The president responded, and it was progressives who largely worked to pass his reform agenda, with significant success.

The largest recovery plan in history. Comprehensive health care reform. The largest increase in student aid since the G.I. bill. Soon, what could be the first major financial reform since the Great Depression.

Yet progressives have grown ever more disappointed. The reforms were both historic and insufficient to the cause. The recovery plan too small. The health care plan dangerously compromised. Financial reform too timid. Even the student aid was overwhelmed by the soaring tuitions and severe budget cuts in universities. Wall Street was rescued while unemployment rose to 10 percent.

And progressives suffered reverses. Escalation in Afghanistan and compromise on core civil liberties. No movement on worker rights. No movement on comprehensive immigration reform. Delay on Don't Ask, Don't Tell. Retreat on choice. Retreat on climate change and new energy.

What happened?

Surely, the resistance has been fierce. Republicans chose obstruction as a political strategy in the middle of a Great Recession. Entrenched corporate interests mobilized. Conservative Democrats were too easily cowed or compromised.

But the White House has also been an uncertain trumpet. The president never claimed to be a movement progressive the way Ronald Reagan exulted in being a movement conservative. The breath of the president's vision was often not matched with the scope of his program. The reforms proposed were pre-emptively compromised. The argument for change often muted in the search for a deal.

Not surprisingly, the Obama presidency sparked a rabid right-wing reaction. But with progressives largely enmeshed in the often squalid legislative debates, the right's faux populism gained traction — focusing public anger at the administration's efforts to staunch the crisis, rather than at the failed conservative policies that caused it.